


aeons far from the sun

by transtlanticism



Category: Project Nemesis Series - Brendan Reichs
Genre: F/M, Love me some AUs, Non canon compliant, and some mintack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-02
Updated: 2018-10-02
Packaged: 2019-07-23 22:32:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16168184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transtlanticism/pseuds/transtlanticism
Summary: Pre-Nemesis AU. Fifteen-year-old Min tells Tack about the murders.





	aeons far from the sun

“Listen.” Tack plunked a to-go cup of coffee in front of me and slid into the chair opposite, pulling his hat off of his wild black hair. It immediately stood up in all directions, propelled by static energy. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I can just tell.”

I snorted dubiously. “Tack, come on. You didn’t notice for three weeks when Lars Jergen shaved his entire beard off, but you expect me to believe you’ve become so observant that—”

“I don’t share any classes with Lars,” Tack fired back. “But I do drink coffee. And I’m telling you, this is made with almond milk.”

“You wouldn’t know almond milk if it waltzed up to the door of your trailer holding a giant sign with your name on it.” I reached for his cup and took an experimental sip. “This tastes exactly the same.”

“Your tastebuds are pathetic.” Tack unwrapped the scarf still bundled around his neck and hung it haphazardly next to his hat over the back of his chair. “So. Tell me about your life.”

A burst of freezing wind swept the room as the door opened, and I shivered slightly as a group of red-cheeked skiers barged inside. “You know everything about my life. You haven’t left my side all day, save the classes we don’t share.”

“There are lots of things I don’t know,” Tack protested. “I don’t know your favorite song. Or...why your mother doesn’t trust me. Or why you hate your birthday. Or whether you want to go out with me.”

“My birthday?” I repeated, suddenly frozen in my seat, completely blanking the rest of the sentence.

Tack opened his mouth. Closed it. “Melinda, are you kidding me?”

The rest of what he’d said suddenly clicked. “Oh. My favorite song...don’t be an ass, you know what it is. My mother doesn’t trust you for many reasons, mainly because you’re always getting in trouble. She stopped trusting you after the kite incident.”

“And?”

“What was the last bit?”

Tack rolled his eyes. “Your birthday. That’s it.”

“I just don’t like them.”

“I bet we can get to the bottom of this.” Tack adopted a mock-serious expression and tapped a pencil against the table. “Come on, Min, spill. Is it the time of year? Because having a birthday during the school year sucks. Do you just hate the attention? That does sound like you.”

I looked away. “Tack, just drop it.”

He studied me for a minute.

“Traumatic experience,” he proclaimed. “That’s it. Something happened on your birthday one year.”

My voice was sharp. “I’m serious, Tack.”

He’d dropped the fake psychologist voice by now. “Min. Hey. What could be so bad that you can’t even talk about it? With me?” He didn’t sound hurt that I hadn’t shared, just concerned and a bit bewildered.

“It’s nothing,” I muttered. I drained the rest of my coffee and threw the cup in the trash, pulling my hat back over my head and zipping up my coat. “I need to get home.”

“You never answered my last question,” Tack said.

I looked at him. He was still in the chair, leaned back against the window, eyebrows raised, a tight smile betraying his anxiety.

“Jesus, Tack.”

“Let me at least walk with you,” he said. “Otherwise we both have to walk back by ourselves, and just because you’re mad at me doesn’t mean we have to do that.”

I pushed open the swinging door, emerging into the freezing snow. “I’m not mad at you.”

He gave me a wide grin. “Good.”

…

We ended up in the Ski Lift later that night, the remains of a frozen pizza between us. We were both deluged in snow that had fallen into our little sanctuary from higher branches, and were frozen half to death but too content to move.

Tack squinted between the branches. “Big Dipper,” he said. “Look at that. Wonder what happens if one of the stars dies?”

“NASA would know before it happened,” I said absently, craning my neck to make out the faint constellation. I wished we were on the mountain; the valley had too much light pollution to see much. “They’d warn us.”

“Hey, Min?”

His face was unreadable in the darkness, and I was hoping he wasn’t going to say we had to be home soon. Because I knew, and I really didn’t want to. I wanted to stay in this tree with him and forget about school, and home, and the black-suited man who ran my life.

“Yeah?”

“I’m not going to bug you for information.” Snow crunched under one of his sneakers as he shifted to face me. “I just want you to know that I love you, and I’m here for you, and if you ever want to talk about something…”

He trailed off, but I knew he meant it. He was definitely curious, I could tell, but he really was more worried that I was okay than interested in whatever dramatic retelling I might have to share.

“Thanks,” I whispered, and he nodded, returning his attention to the stars.

Maybe it was the navy night sky. Maybe it was the complete absence of noise, buried under a blanket of snow. Maybe it was the bitter air that pushed us close together in our tree shelter to keep warm.

Maybe it was just the fact that it was Tack, and I trusted him with my life, and I really, really wanted to finally tell someone who didn’t think I was completely out of my mind.

“It started when I was eight,” I said haltingly.

Tack’s head whipped around, like he couldn’t believe I was actually telling him. “Do I need popcorn for this?”

“No, but you may want to make sure you don’t fall out of the tree.” I hesitated. “You won’t believe me. There’s no way.”

“Of course I will.”

“Not this. Even I wouldn’t believe it, if it didn’t happen to me.” My voice shook slightly. “I still don’t think...everyone thinks it’s...”

“Slow down.” Tack’s voice was uncharacteristically calming. “Start from the beginning. You were eight.”

What was I doing? This was Tack. There was no way he would believe me.

And yet.

I told him. I told him about the murders. The man who had chased me down, found me hiding in the most isolated places, lured me from safety and murdered me in cold blood. About how I woke up, every time, unharmed.

By the time I finished, Tack’s mouth was hanging open, and he looked like he couldn’t figure out whether I was joking or not.

“They think I have a dissociative disorder,” I said quietly. “That’s why I have to see Dr. Lowell. Why they gave me the little blue pills that do nothing. Why I hide in my room every year.”

“You...” Tack was still struggling to comprehend the enormity of my story. “Every other year? You were hunted down, and—someone tried to kill you? Every even birthday?”

“Not tried to.” I swallowed a lump in my throat. “Tack, I die. Every single time.”

“And wake up. Totally unharmed.”

“Yup.” My voice broke.

“Okay.” Color was beginning to return to his face. “Okay. I have to hand it to you. This is not what I was expecting.”

I almost laughed. “Wow, you think?”

Tack fixed me with his piercing blue gaze. “Min,” he said. “Tell me this. Do you think you have a dissociative disorder?”

The same question I’d been puzzling over for years.

“It feels so real,” I said finally. “I just don’t have proof. Everything is cleaned up perfectly. But I can’t think of any other explanation than that I really am crazy.”

“You don’t strike me as the crazy type.” Tack leaned back against the branches. “Which means there’s a logical explanation for this.”

“By all means, share your thoughts,” I said darkly.

“Okay. Here’s what I’ve got.” He ticked off fingers as he spoke. “You’re immortal. Or invulnerable, or whatever. You’re airlifted to some sort of hospital who immediately puts you back together after everything happens and then abandons you in the woods. You’re secretly in a virtual reality and they’re testing you to see if you can escape. You’re dreaming and you sleepwalk, which explains why you always wake up in the same place.” He paused to frown into the tree canopy. “It’s fucked up that the first explanation makes the most sense.”

“You actually believe me?” I burst.

“Well, yeah.” Tack looked startled.

“You don’t think I’m crazy.”

“Nope.”

”How?”

He looked like he was debating his next words.

“There are things that don’t add up,” he said slowly. “I remember the year you hid behind the summer camp. I couldn’t find you anywhere that day. You told me later you’d been here, all day, but I checked here twice and you weren’t. And the next day...” He shook his head. “Your hair was definitely longer.”

A chill went through me. I hadn’t noticed, hadn’t even considered the possibility that my appearance might have been different. I’d been too preoccupied with the fallout at school. “What?”

“It was longer,” he repeated. “I remember. It was just above your chin, and then it was suddenly hanging below your chin. I didn’t know what to make of it, so I didn’t say anything. I don’t know how that fits in, but...it was different.”

I gripped Tack’s hand, trying desperately not to fall out of the tree. I was very, very close to freaking out. Because he’d actually noticed something I’d missed. Because he believed me. Because this was a whole new piece of the puzzle that didn’t remotely fit.

“Min?” He looked worried. “Do we need to climb down?”

“No,” I managed. “I’m fine.”

“Hey.” His arms went around me, and I leaned into him, my head buried in his shoulder. “Min, I swear, we’re going to figure this out. We will. No joke. I’m with you the whole way.”

I couldn’t get past the fact that he actually believed me.

When we finally climbed down and headed back, it was late, and there were a few drunken tourists on the streets—God knows what they were doing so far from town, but I didn’t stop to ask. When we finally ducked inside the trailer park, Tack hugged me again and kissed me on the forehead before slipping into his own trailer.

I just kind of stood there for a minute, wondering about my best friend Tack, and his last question that I’d never answered.

…

“I did some research last night.”

Next morning. Bus stop. I was half-asleep when Tack came marching up, phone in hand, squinting at his screen in the sunlight.

“On?”

“Well, since this is clearly the start of a fantasy novel, I thought it would be best if we figured out what you are first.” He held up a vegetable, clearly something he’d dug up from his refrigerator, and I squinted at it.

“Is that garlic?”

He hurled it at me, and I ducked as it bounced off the gatepost.

“Tack!”

“You flinched at the garlic,” he said triumphantly.

“Because you chucked it at my head!” I picked up the garlic and handed it back to him. “Tack, there’s no proof. Not of anything. In all likelihood, I really do have psychotic episodes every two years.”

“I don’t buy it.” He waved the garlic in my face, and I rolled my eyes as he made a note on his phone. “Not…allergic…to garlic.”

“I’m not a vampire.”

“So the evidence says, but I’d have to stake you to find out for sure. Which I don’t plan on doing.”

“I don’t drink blood!”

“Have you ever tried it?”

The bus pulled up, effectively putting an end to this line of conversation. Or so I thought. By the time we got to the back of the bus, Tack had already moved onto the next mythical creature.

“Werewolf?”

“I’m not a werewolf,” I hissed under my breath, casting a glance at the closest people to make sure they hadn’t overheard. “And shut up.”

“No. Banshee?” He frowned. “Maybe a…reverse banshee? I mean, you know the moment of your own death…”

“There’s no such thing as a reverse banshee.” Whoops. That was too loud. Luckily, no one was paying attention to us, as usual.

“Maybe you’re just a series of doppelgängers that replace each other as you each die off.”

I sighed.

“Grim Reaper. But again, like, a reverse Grim Reaper.” He zoomed in on a section. “Ghost?”

“That’s the most plausible one I’ve heard so far.”

He grabbed my arm. “Solid. Not a ghost. Ghosts are transparent.”

“Maybe I’m a zombie.” I was beginning to enjoy this. It beat sitting around, wondering if I was legitimately unhinged.

“How about this one?” Tack was almost at the end of his list. “Wraith. ‘Evil spirits of the dead that are trapped on earth.’”

“Ridiculous.” The bus pulled up at school, and I grabbed my backpack. “I might be a spirit of the dead, but I’m not evil.”

“This is cool.” Tack followed me down the aisle as everyone slowly exited the bus. “Maybe you secretly have powers you don’t know about. Maybe you can bring other people back from the dead, too.”

I sighed. There was no use convincing Tack that I was human.

“Have you ever set up a camera?” he asked. “For the murder?”

I blinked. I’d never thought of that. “No. But I never know where I’m going to die.”

“That’s true.” Tack’s eyes glinted as we strolled past the morning prayer circle. Blessedly, the asshole brigade consisting of Ethan, Noah, Toby and the Nolan twins ignored us as we pushed through the doors into the school. “How about setting a trap?”

“He would definitely see that coming. We’re not great at being covert.” I nodded down the hall, where Principal Myers was beadily eyeing us as we walked to our lockers.

“Yeah, well, Peg Leg is a different story.” Tack effortlessly spun his combination and cracked his locker open, peering inside. “Ah, man, I thought my algebra book was here.”

I handed him a text out of my own locker. “This algebra book? You left it at my place two weeks ago.”

“Oh, shit. Thanks.” He swung his locker shut and turned to me. “Any chance your super-secret special powers can get us out of math first thing?”

I snorted. “I think my talents only extend to coming back from the dead.”

“At least there’s that.” His face sobered. “Whoever’s trying to kill you…Min, I think he knows what you are. What you can do. I think he’s trying to end you for good.”

I’d never looked at it that way before.

“Why every two years?” I said bitterly. “Why always on my birthday? None of this makes sense.” I slammed my own locker, started trudging to algebra. “It’s got to be a delusion, Tack. There’s no way this is real. Things like this just don’t happen.”

“Why would you only have the episode every two years, like clockwork?” Tack said reasonably. “None of this adds up, Min, but psychotic episodes just don’t work like that. Whatever this is…it’s not in your head.”

We walked through a patch of sunlight that caught the sharp angle of his cheekbone and just as suddenly vanished as we passed the window. It flickered along the hallway like static, lighting up his face at intervals until we hit the stairs at the back of the building.

“I’m not sure if I believe that,” I said finally.

“You don’t have to.” Tack extended a hand as we started climbing. “I believe it enough for both of us.”

I reached out and took his hand.

…

The moment the last bell rang, Tack was waiting for me in the hall.

“Valley Grounds?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“Maybe we’ll find some corpses to reanimate along the way.” Tack was scrolling on his phone again with an unusual amount of interest, considering his one and only friend was currently standing right beside him. “You could raise an army of dead.”

“It’s not like I wave my hands and the bones of the dead reassemble themselves,” I pointed out. “In fact, if anyone can bring back the dead, it’s whoever keeps killing me.”

“So they’re the ones with the powers.” Tack’s eyes went wide, but he didn’t look away from his screen. I had the idea that I could climb atop the nearest lamppost and scream into the wind and he wouldn’t even glance at me. “Not you.”

“Pick a theory,” I said, exasperated. “Either he’s hunting me because I can keep regenerating or I’m just target practice for his resurrection magic.”

“Either way, this is necromancy,” Tack declared with the authority of a thousand professors.

We turned left, and I gently shoved Tack onto the sidewalk to block him from oncoming traffic. “What is so fascinating about your phone right now?”

“More research.” Tack slipped the device into his backpack. “I’m looking for people who have reported similar experiences to yours.”

“What, really?” I pulled him aside and glanced up and down the street to make sure no one was eavesdropping. “Have you found anything?”

“Well, you know, it’s the Internet.” Tack gestured vaguely. “Lots of fruitcakes claiming near-death experiences actually killed them. But nothing at all similar to what you told me.”

“Ah.”

Tack eyed me carefully. “I also did some research on dissociative disorders, if you’re interested.”

I’d given this topic a few Googles myself. “Any conclusions?”

“It doesn’t sound right.” We started walking again, and he brushed snow from his hair that had fallen on us from a building. “Usually when this happens to people, it’s voices in their heads, or them trying to hurt themselves, or forgetting things for long periods of time. It says absolutely nothing about people believing they’re being murdered and waking up somewhere else, or it happening at predictable, patterned periods of time. This should be erratic, you should feel like you’re losing it…”

“Sometimes I do,” I quipped, but Tack shook his head.

“I’m serious, Min. This isn’t you. You didn’t have past childhood trauma that this stemmed from. The only childhood trauma you had was this happening to you.” Tack’s cobalt eyes locked on mine. “I sincerely do not believe that you have a dissociative disorder.”

“Then what the fuck is wrong with me?” I exploded. “What keeps happening?”

Tack was quiet for a minute.

“You could still be a zombie,” he suggested lightly. “Maybe the rotting-flesh-brain-eating thing is just a myth.”

I guffawed, and for a moment, the air was quiet save the two of us, laughing loudly enough to turn heads from tourists still wrapping up their winter break.

“You’re a jackass,” I said, trying to fight off a lingering smile.

“Yeah, but I’m your favorite jackass.” He bumped my shoulder, and I noticed for the first time that he didn’t look like a little kid anymore. He was still as skinny as he’d ever been, but at some point he’d shot up to my height (still short, to be fair) and he looked…older.

The realization was numbing, but I shook it off as Tack opened the door to Valley Grounds and swept an arm in front of himself, allowing me first entry. I took our backpacks to a table as he went up to get coffee.

In the pocket, his phone buzzed a low battery chime, and I remembered the research he’d been doing. Without thinking, I reached into his bag and lifted out the phone, reloading the last page he’d been looking at.

“Yahoo Answers?” I snorted, waving the phone at him.

“That’s where all the yahoos go to get answers,” Tack called.

Shaking my head, I accessed his search history, flicking through the web pages he’d been looking at: severe dissociative disorder, characteristics of vampires, several incredibly specific Google searches about near-death experiences. Tack was always unnecessarily literal with his search strings, addressing the search engine like a person instead of an informational database.

I closed the tab as Tack brought over our coffee.

“Find anything interesting?” he asked. “Personally, the eldritch creature website was my favorite.”

“Nah.” I handed back the phone. “Let me know when you find some tangible answers.”

“Here’s a tangible answer,” Tack challenged. “I asked, and they did make my coffee with almond milk yesterday.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Nope.” He tipped his chair back, looking just a tad too smug. “They ran out of regular. I told you.”

I balled my napkin and tossed it at him. “I only hope you’re so right about my my own personal murder mystery.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Tack said confidently, returning all four chair legs to the ground. “We’re the best investigative team Fire Lake has ever seen. Sheriff Watson’s got nothing on us.”

…

The next day was Saturday, and I laid in bed for a good long while before my mother finally began knocking. Her shift had been switched today, and she was due to leave in an hour, but that didn’t stop her from waking me up right along with her.

“I’m up!” 

“Liar."

I quickly rolled out of bed and headed for the bathroom. After getting washed, dressed and battling my hair for ten minutes in a desperate attempt to get it to lie flat, I finally emerged into the living room.

My mother was at our little table, still wrapped in a bathrobe. “Any plans today?”

“Yes.” A lie. I didn’t elaborate. I always kept peculiar hours, sometimes leaving early in the morning or late at night, to cover for my birthdays. 

“Will you be home for dinner?”

“Don’t know.” I leaned against the counter, hurriedly scarfing down a piece of toast. The moment I was finished, I pulled on my coat, gloves and hat. “See you later.”

“Be home for dinner,” she said. “Please.”

“Okay.” I tried not to meet her eyes as I stepped through the door and slammed it shut.

Once outside, I tried to figure out what to do. I was used to staying out of sight—taking a walk through the woods, maybe, or hiking out to Starlight’s Edge—or going into town, which meant I’d see people from school, but I’d be somewhere indoors.

But then again, it wasn’t my birthday. I could swing by and grab Tack first.

As luck had it, he was already outside, sitting on a snowy chair, looking incredibly cross. His expression cleared when I approached, and he stood up, shoving his phone into his pocket.

“Everything good?” I asked.

Tack shrugged. “Didn’t feel like hanging around my dad today.”

I accepted the unspoken explanation. Obviously, something had happened this morning that Tack didn’t feel like sharing.

“Well, my mom will be gone soon,” I said. “If you want to stay under the radar.”

“Sounds good.” Tack scuffed his foot against a mound of snow that was quickly turning to slush. Still early January, I guessed it was probably going to snow again in a few days, but I couldn’t help enjoying the unexpected sunlight and knew the tourists were slowly filtering out and heading home. 

We wandered to the far corner of the trailer park just as my mother exited, hefting her bag over her shoulder. I pulled Tack aside and stepped out of her sight, not up for another conversation with her. She walked right past us without a word.

Tack glanced at me. “Everything okay with you two?”

A sigh escaped. “Is it ever?”

“Fair enough.”

Back inside, I had to admit that staying indoors was probably a good idea. Though the sun was shining, it was bitterly cold, and the sunlight filtering through the windows warmed up the whole trailer. 

Tack sprawled in a patch of sunlight on my carpet, shedding his heavy coat and shoving it aside. “It’s so cold,” he complained. “So. Cold.”

“We live in Idaho, Thomas. In the mountains. In January.” 

“Yes, and we’re going to freeze to death here.” He sat up. “This place isn’t meant for human habitation. We should all be living in…South Carolina. Florida. Hell, I’d go to Texas if it meant getting away from this weather. When was the last time we wore short sleeves, Min? It’s been aeons.”

“You wear short sleeves on a daily basis!” I exclaimed. “You’re wearing short sleeves right now!”

“Yeah, but under a sweatshirt.” He plucked the sleeve for emphasis. “Are you not freezing? Or is it all just the same to you once you’ve been a corpse for a while?”

“Do I look like a corpse to you?”

“You are pretty goddamn pale.”

I scooted off the end of the bed to join him on the floor. “I’m still breathing.”

“A reanimated corpse.” His eyes danced wickedly. “The real test is if you still have a pulse.”

“And if I do?”

I was very aware of how close we were sitting. 

But Tack was my best friend. We were always sitting this close together. Why was this any different.

He reached for my wrist. “Guess we’ll find out,” he said, but the teasing lilt was gone from his voice.

The seconds that stretched as his fingers closed around my wrist felt like hours. It felt like we’d been sitting there on the floor for days, rather than half a minute, tops.

“You have no idea how to take a pulse, do you?” I asked.

“Absolutely no idea.”

I guided his hand to the spot on my inner wrist.

“Well,” he said. “You definitely have a heartbeat. Although, I think it’s working overtime.”

He was right. My heart was pounding a mile a minute. And I still didn’t know why.

“I don’t think that’s because I’m dead,” I finally managed.

“No, it’s not.” His hand still encircled my wrist, and I wondered if he was feeling the surreality of the moment as much as I was. “You’re definitely alive."

Just as suddenly as it had begun, he released me and the moment shattered. I reached up to grab my phone, lying on the bed, hoping he wouldn’t notice the sudden awkward silence.

He did, though. Tack had always been incredibly perceptive.

…

“Hey. Min.”

My eyes flew open. The light was different in the room, and my mouth felt heavy with sleep. 

“Shit. How long was I out?”

“Two hours.” Tack’s voice floated up from the floor. “Don’t worry, you didn’t snore. Much.”

I hurled a pillow at him. He caught it, tossed it back. 

“What time will your mom get home?” Tack asked. 

I reached for my phone, wedged uncomfortably under my spine. “Probably around ten. So a good seven hours or so. I promised to be home for dinner.”

“Pretty fricking late dinner,” Tack noted, standing up and stretching his wiry limbs. “Want to walk into town? Maybe if we’re lucky we can run into our best pals, Ethan and Toby and the Nolan twins. And the cheerleaders along with them.”

As little as I wanted to see any of our beloved classmates, I was also a bit stir-crazy and dying for some fresh air. 

“So,” I asked as we headed through the gates and circled Miner’s Peak, “what were you up to while I was asleep?”

“Necromancy research,” Tack said calmly. I’d forgotten how all-consuming his interests were. Once started on something, he never stopped until he cracked it. I might just have chosen the best possible person to confide in about my situation. 

“Necromancy,” I repeated dubiously. 

He kicked a pebble. “It’s all fluffy granola shit from, like, fake Wicca websites. I gave up on that and started Google Mapping the canyon you fell into.”

Huh. “I remember when they dropped the camera down there.”

He looked troubled. “How exactly did you die that day, Min?”

“Bashed my head on a rock at the bottom of the falls. Drowned immediately afterwards.” I shook my head. “Woke up in the damn woods.”

He had an awful expression on his face, and I knew it was beginning to sink in. This wasn’t a fairytale, a fantasy story of the girl who triumphed, who defied death time and time again. This was the story of my murder. 

Over and over and over. 

“Still think I’m not crazy?” I asked quietly. 

Tack halted on a street corner, pulling out his phone and accessing the close-up view of the canyon photos they took for Google. 

“What am I looking at?” I asked, my eyes skipping over the rock crevices. “I was a little busy falling and screaming, not taking in the scenery.”

But no sooner had the words left my mouth than I spotted it. 

“That’s the exact fabric of the dress,” Tack said, his voice hard. “Right? Your tenth birthday?”

I couldn’t have forgotten that dress for my life. Or my death. 

“That’s the one,” I said. “But—I was still wearing it when I woke up in the woods.”

Tack zoomed in further, until it was a pink blur. “How can it be there and here at the same time?”

“How can I be dead and alive at the same time?”

“I’ve got a theory.” The sky had clouded over, and snow was beginning to fall, landing in Tack’s tangle of dark hair. 

“Do tell.”

“Parallel universes,” Tack said impishly. “There’s a rip in ours, and another one keeps spilling through. 

“Parallel universes, huh?” My gloved hand found his as we stood on the sidewalk, leaning against the back of the library. “I’ll give you credit for creativity on that one.”

“Maybe it’s a parallel universe where you’re in love with me.” He looked horrified after he’d said it, like he hadn’t meant for it to slip out. 

I swallowed, staring up at the lightly spiraling snow. “Maybe that’s this one.”

He looked bewildered at first, and I watched the hope slowly creep into his expression, followed by disbelief. 

“Min,” he said, and we were standing close enough that I could see the snowflakes clinging to his eyelashes, piling in glittering strands on his hair, the blinding white stark against the black. 

I leaned forward and kissed him. 

When we broke, he was smiling, the first genuine smile I’d seen all day, and the tiredness in his face had almost completely evaporated. 

“Whatever dimension of Min you absorbed last year,” he said, taking my hand again, “she knows what’s up.”

I tried not to laugh. 

With Tack, that was always impossible. 

…

And even months later, when we’d finally found the true meaning of Project Nemesis, Tack never dropped his rambling theories. 

“You might be thirty different clones—”

“Um, five. Six when we finally get out of here.”

“—but put it on the record, Min, that you’re a zombie. When was the last time you got up in the morning without bitching about it first?”

He’d find me after every reset, no matter which location. No matter how trivial the death, it was always a breath of relief to see him hidden in the trees, waiting to make sure I safely returned to the Program. 

“God,” he said once, almost dropping my coat into the snow. “I miscounted. I was about ready to give up.”

“That was four,” I said breathlessly, pulling him into a hug. “I’m on the brink, so we have to be careful.”

“We need to get you a life.” At my disapproving look, he hugged me again. “I’m not losing you, Melinda. In no dimension would I be prepared for that, ever. I love you.”

“I love you too,” I whispered. “In every dimension.”

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: @spookytack during october, @tackmins any other time


End file.
